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OPINION

What about cities’ rights?

Nowhere is there more hue and cry for states’ rights than in Alabama. We are constantly bombarded with complaints, whines, and lamentations over the intrusiveness of the big bad federal government. States’ rights advocates regularly grieve decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, and the President in areas that they claim should be jurisdictionally inviolate, including education, marriage, and privacy.

And yet, those very state governments that resent federal supremacy are themselves guilty of depriving their own counties and cities of “home rule.” In response to inflation and the sinking middle class, many cities and corporations in America have increased the minimum wage payable to workers. Birmingham recently tried to do so, crafting an ordinance that would have ultimately required workers to be paid $10.10 an hour. Setting aside focus on its budget and other compelling issues such as prison reform, education, taxation, and Medicaid, the Alabama House rushed through a successful vote for a bill that prohibits cities and counties from setting a minimum wage.

Mountain Brook representative David Faulkner, the bill’s sponsor, decried (1) the discouragement to business recruitment inherent in the ordinance, and (2) its potential for creating a “patchwork” of wages throughout the state. House Speaker Mike Hubbard said “it’s just not good policy” for different cities to have different minimum wage settings. None of these reasons withstands scrutiny.
Two “introductory” realities are instructive. First - and ironically - Alabama has no legislatively mandated minimum wage for workers. It follows the mandate of the big bad federal government. Second, the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, resulting in full-time annual pay of $15,080, is slightly below the poverty line for a family of two and almost $10,000 below the poverty line for a family of four.

Alabama’s low minimum wage has not resulted in long lines of corporations waiting to do business here. Indeed, the paltry hourly wage is at least one index of the quality of education available to our children, which in turn devalues their work and their abilities upon graduation. For example, it is no secret that companies like General Electric and Hyundai, having found an ill-educated workforce here, almost immediately partnered with local schools to design curricula to develop a well-trained workforce. Alabama’s wages don’t attract businesses; Alabama’s education systems repel them.

Faulkner’s and Hubbard’s concern about “patchwork” policies is hypocrisy at its best. Most of the almost 900 amendments to Alabama’s constitution - the longest in the entire world - contain provisions that differentiate policies in one county or city jurisdiction from those in others. As if Alabama’s cities are children incapable of self-governance, the Alabama legislature has passed bills and submitted them for public approval to regulate such minutiae as compensation for the Marengo County probate judge (609), Mobile County’s use of general obligation bonds (447), addendum to court fines for DUI in Chambers County (476), financing the jail in Talladega County (522), and annexation in Baldwin County (627).

The Alabama Constitution is itself a patchwork, and its amendments comprise an incomprehensible quilt that is made even more confusing by the fact that some of them contradict others. Indeed, several of the amendments to Alabama’s constitution “amend” other amendments (314, 369, 428, 500, 600, 670 and many others).

The more likely reason for the legislature’s intervention, or meddling, is that Birmingham’s ordinance is not in lockstep with the minimum wage edict issued by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the Republicans’ alternative Supreme Court. From personhood amendments to charter schools to criminal justice reform, ALEC has formulated positions on issues that Republican-led legislatures have consistently and blindly implemented as state law. That Birmingham has overwhelmingly elected leaders who are Democrats is an additional incentive for state government’s inclination to reject the ordinance.

While arguing that the people of Alabama should determine their own destinies, the majority of Alabama’s House of Representatives should accord that same privilege to the people in the cities and counties.

Vanzetta Penn McPherson is a retired U.S. magistrate judge for the Middle District of Alabama. Send email to mcphersonscribe@knology.net.